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Hillary Clinton has delivered a scathing assault against Donald Trump's plans for the economy, warning that the "king of debt" would throw the country back into recession.

The likely Democratic presidential nominee also derided her rival's business record, describing his fortune as being founded on his repeatedly "stiffing" his employees.

"Donald Trump's ideas about the economy and the world will cause millions of Americans to lose their jobs," she told her audience in Ohio, a state at the heart of America's industrial rust belt.

Mr Trump has built his presidential campaign, in large part, on the support from an ailing American middle class.

In the months long primary race, he travelled often to beleaguered towns rarely usually visited by presidential hopefuls.

He has promised to revive a golden era for industrial labourers, and remove the chains of indigence from the working poor.

But, Mrs Clinton said, a hard look at his economic policies shows that it is these very supporters who would suffer the most.

The Democratic hopeful cited think tanks and economists from both sides of the political aisle, who concluded that Mr Trump's economy would see up to three and half million people lose their jobs, debt explode and incomes stagnate.

"Just like he shouldn’t have his finger on the button," she said, referring to the nuclear codes, "he shouldn’t have his hands on our economy."

Mrs Clinton laid into Mr Trump's corporate empire, aiming to disarm her rival's potent claim that he can translate his business acumen into Oval Office success.

"He's written a lot of books about business. They all seem to end at chapter 11," she quipped, referring to the US legal code that addresses bankruptcy and reorganisation.

Hundreds of people lost their jobs when the casino mogul went bankrupt on four occasions, she said, but Mr Trump "walked away" declaring the losses were not his "problem".

She said Mr Trump had refused to pay workers their due and had his own products manufactured overseas - moves she argued punished hard-working Americans.

"In America, we don't begrudge people being successful, but we know they shouldn't do it by destroying other people's dreams," she said.

"We can't let him bankrupt America like we are one of his failed casinos. We cannot let him roll the dice with our children's futures."

Mr Trump, issued a response, in the form of nine, increasingly irate, tweets:

I will be making a big speech tomorrow to discuss the failed policies and bad judgment of Crooked Hillary Clinton.

Mrs Clinton was ready for him, however, leading her audience in a thought experiment, asking them to imagine Mr Trump in the Oval Office the next time America faced a crisis:

"Imagine him being in charge when your jobs and savings are at stake... someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who’d likely be on Twitter attacking reporters, or bringing the whole regulatory system down on critics?"

Mrs Clinton has struggled to convince the American public that she is the right choice for president.

She faced a tough, narrowly won battle against Bernie Sanders, the self-declared socialist Vermont senator in the primary race, with many Americans feeling her long stint in public life has left her alienated and out of touch with the average voter.

Her speeches have at times appeared stiff, or even aloof. But in her attacks on Mr Trump, Mrs Clinton appears to be finally finding a voice.

Tuesday's speech on the economy was the second major address this month attacking her likely Republican presidential rival. In these speeches she has previewed her strategy for a national campaign; to hang Mr Trump on his own words.

Mr Trump, she said in her closing remarks on Tuesday, has no plan for dealing with pressing economic matters such as the cost of education or rebuilding America's ailing infrastructure.

But then, she said: "We shouldn't expect better from someone who's most famous words are 'you're fired'."